Valve have revealed Source 2 – a successor to their own in-house Source engine that powers all of their games, including Dota 2, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life 2. Speaking at this year’s Game Developers Conference, Valve also stated that the new engine will be made free to all developers.

“This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity,” Valve stated in a press-release “will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform.”

Source 2’s existence isn’t exactly news – we’ve known about it for a long time now. But at this year’s GDC, Valve formally announced that not only Source 2 is a thing, but it’ll also be free to any developers who want to use it.

“The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the productivity of those who use the platform.” said Valve’s Jay Stelly “With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games.

“We will be making Source 2 available for free to content developers. This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform.”

Also in the announcement, Valve confirmed that there will be a Vulkan-compatible version of the new Source 2 engine; the Vulkan being a new API developed by the Khronos Group, touting the ability to let game developers “get the most” out of the “latest graphics hardware”.

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